The present disclosure relates generally to data communications systems, and, more particularly, to the detection of peers in such systems.
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
FireWire®, which is a trademark used by Apple Inc. to refer to a High Performance Serial Bus compliant with the IEEE 1394 standard, provides high speed information transfer between digital devices. Digital devices having FireWire capabilities may be connected through a serial bus for high speed data transfer in a peer-to-peer network. A serial bus may be connected to a FireWire device at one or more ports (e.g., IEEE 1394 ports, or FireWire ports). Each port may include a physical layer (PHY) through which data bits are transferred between the device and the connecting serial bus. The PHY at the port may have connection points to enable the device to detect a connection with another FireWire device (i.e., a peer). For example, the PHY chip on each device may have connection points for a signal pair, or a twisted pair A (TPA) and a twisted pair B (TPB), which receive and transmit information between the device and another peer in the network.
In a typical FireWire device, the TPA and TPB may be constantly powered, such that a current value at the port(s) of each device may be measured to determine whether a peer is connected to the device. However, the current used to perform this standard peer detection may be large, and the constant supplying of the current may consume a large amount of power.